I have a Motorola Defy XT and there has been a couple times when I needed wifi for my computer. Has anyone figured out if we can use our Defy XT for a hotspot, and if so, how. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I have read the terms of service, and it does say it is not allowed unless republic wireless approves it. How would we get approval to do so? I refer to 19d (also in b) which states: unless specifically identified and approved by Republic Wireless. Any ideas?

After all, if RW can use WiFi all the times it's available for other devices, then it only seems fair that your other devices should be able to use your cellular connection when WiFi isn't available.

Tethering is the way to go. A WiFi hot spot is nothing but another device to carry around/troubleshoot/leave at home/break/maintain/upgrade/lose. Moreover, it shouldn't be necessary to walk around paying for two cellular lines that you're trying to not need in the first place. It would be nonsense to buy one ADSL line for your computers and another ADSL line for your VoIP handset, and so the same is true for cellular lines. The right thing to do is for the device with cellular access (your RW phone) to share it when needed and not just leech off of everybody's ISPs.

Interesting concept in that, if approved across the customer base, it would drive up RW's cost of doing business. That would ultimately force RW to violate their business plan by increasing their rates. And I don't believe anyone bought into this program with the desire to drive up the monthly charges for everyone. Why would you? I'm just curious.

The more people actually use their phones, keeping a constant WiFi offload percentage way beyond 60%, the higher the cost of doing business might be. We're both speculating. Surely you aren't arguing that people look for reasons to not use their phones so much; nobody claimed that is RW's business model. Why wouldn't their business plan be based on typical usage patterns but with a high-enough offload percentage?

So the question really is, why should typical usage not include tethering, as long as the overall offload percentage is high enough?